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Leddon Cottage, Welcombe, Bideford, Devon.—Discusses the implications for the Oxford Shakespeare of the work of Bowers and his students.

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Leddon Cottage, Welcombe, Bideford, Devon.
17 June 1951

Dear Sir Walter,

Thank you very much indeed for the loan of University of Virginia Studies III {1}. I shall be returning it tomorrow. I was very glad to have the opportunity of reading at greater leisure the articles of Professor Bald and Professor Bowers and was, of course, especially glad to have a copy of your paper.

I am very much interested in the work of Professor Bowers and his students. It is, in many ways, a mercy Dr. McKerrow got no further with his project than he did. The trouble was, I think, that he knew quite well he oughtn’t to start publication until at least the preliminary work was done for all the plays, but had already spent so long on laying the foundations that he felt he must make a start. I am sure it was a mistake. I doubt if it is any use attempting an edition on the Clarendon Press scale until it is known how far copies of the Folio and quartos differ among themselves and until we have better date {2} for discriminating between the work of compositors and collators in Folio texts printed from corrected quartos. I am getting on as best as I can with the latter line of investigation, but it is hampering not to have facsimiles of all the quarto editions used for Folio texts.

Professor Nicoll crawled over the Othello muddle. I have since heard that the Shakespeare Survey Board celebrates April 23rd (when the meeting was held) rather well and doubtless some poor and unhappy head was responsible for the confusion.

I hope you have enjoyed your visit to the sea.

With many thanks,

Yours sincerely,
Alice Walker.

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Typed, except the signature.

{1} Studies in Bibliography, vol. 3 (1950-1). The volume contained three papers: ‘Editorial Problems—A Preliminary Survey’ by R. C. Bald, ‘The Rationale of Copy-Text’ by W. W. Greg, and ‘Some Relations of Bibliography to Editorial Problems’ by Fredson Bowers.

{2} A slip for 'data'.

McKerrow considered producing an original-spelling edition of Shakespeare as early as 1910, but abandoned the idea on learning that another new edition of the writer’s works was underway. In 1929, however, he was invited by the Clarendon Press to undertake just such an edition as he had formerly had in mind. He accepted immediately and spent the remainder of his life working on the project. His progress, however, was slow, mainly owing to the pressure of other commitments and to ill health, and in 1936 he invited a fellow-scholar, Alice Walker, to assist him. With her help a substantial amount of the work for the first three volumes had been completed by the time McKerrow died in 1940, but though Walker continued to work sporadically on the edition for the rest of her life the only part ever to see print was McKerrow’s general textual introduction, published in 1939 under the title Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare.

The letters in this file document this collaboration. Most of Miss Walker’s letters were written at 2 Bankfield Lane, Southport, the house she shared with her parents and her sister. Others were written during extended visits to The White House, Tite Hill, Englefield Green, in Surrey, the home of her friend and literary collaborator Gladys Doidge Willcock, and at 151 Woodstock Road, Oxford, the home of Dr F. D. Chattaway and his wife. It is not known with whom she was staying when she wrote from Pleasington, near Blackburn (A4/4).

Clarendon Press, Oxford.—The Press would still like to publish R. B. McKerrow’s ‘Elements of Bibliography’ if the MS is in a suitable state, but could not, after the war, go on with the proposal to produce a new edition of Printers’ and Publishers’ Devices.

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The Clarendon Press, Oxford
12th June, 1940.

Dear Mrs. McKerrow,

I am writing a separate letter about the short Bibliography. I find that we had the MS. for a short time, but returned it on 24th July 1939. {1}

When we last saw your husband he said it was in lecture form, and it would need a certain amount of revision to give it book form, not only in details of wording—in some points it would want rounding or pulling together. We agreed that Miss Walker should read through the MS. to see if your husband had in fact carried out this revision, and should report on it. We should like to go on with the work if it is ready for publication in book form, or can easily be made ready.

I explained that this would have to be a cheap book, to distinguish it from the larger book; and that we thought the royalty proposed would probably give a better result than a higher royalty on a dearer book.

Yours sincerely,
Kenneth Sisam

P.S. Perhaps I should add that I am sure the Delegates, after this war, could not go on with the proposal, which had never been more than tentative, to produce a new edition of Printers’ and Publishers’ Devices. Possibly Mr. Ferguson could persuade the Bibliographical Society to take it up when their commitments are clear, for they, with their body of subscribers, are in the best position to circulate it.

KS

Mrs. A. McKerrow,
Picket Piece, Wendover, Bucks.

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Typed, except signature and initials. At the head is the reference ‘4673/K.S.’, and by the postscript is ‘3985’.

{1} See Add. Ms. a. 355/6/2a-b.

(The document includes handwritten alterations and additions by McKerrow himself, as well as later initialled comments and corrections by Alice Walker and Colin McKerrow.)

43 Elliott’s Row, St George’s Road, S.E.1.—The revelations about Thomas Lodge in the Review of English Studies are interesting. Points out the source of a phrase in Greenes Newes.

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43 Elliott’s Row, St George’s Road | S.E.1.
30 Dec. 1933.

Dear Dr McKerrow

The Review is to hand, and I thank you for having it sent to me. The revelations concerning Thomas Lodge {1} are most interesting to me, and make me view that author’s work from a quite different angle. Of late I’ve had to linger much over his various performances, and those of Robert Greene as well; which reminds me now of a trifle concerning the latter which you might care to take a note of.

The somewhat strange phrase in B.R’s Newes both from Heaven and Hell (p. 4, line 22),

“those lynes, wherein I found such a messe of altogether,”

comes from The Blacke Bookes Messenger, 1592 (Bodley Head Reprint, p. 29), near the close of the tract:

“Never was gentle Angler so drest, for his face, his head, and his necke, were all besmeared with the soft sirreverance [from the chamber-pot], {2} so as he stunke worse than a Jakes Farmer. The Gentleman hearing one cry out, and seeing his messe of altogether so strangely taken away, began to take hart to him,” &c.

I wish you a prosperous new year, and God’s blessing in all you do.

Yours gratefully,
Charles Crawford.

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Formerly inserted in McKerrow’s copy of his edition of Greenes Newes both from Heauen and Hell, 1593 and Greenes Funeralls, 1594 (two texts in one volume) (1911) (Adv. c. 25. 82).

{1} See Alice Walker, ‘The Life of Thomas Lodge’, Review of English Studies, vol. ix, pp. 410-32.

{2} The square brackets are original.

{3} ‘sirreuerence’ in Grosart’s ed. and OED.

27 Oakleigh Park North, Whetstone, N.20.—Praises Greg’s Shakespeare First Folio and refers to Cairncross’s work on Henry V.

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27 Oakleigh Park North,
Whetstone,
N.20.
14 Feb., 1956.

Dear Greg,

I have just read your The Shakespeare First Folio with very great pleasure. In the last few years there seems to have been so much imperfectly founded speculation that it is most welcome to have a balanced appraisal and a clear analysis of the present position. I do congratulate you on its achievement. Indeed, it has stimulated in me the desire to do further work on dramatic texts—for me a kind of luxurious recreation whereby I can shuffle off the immoral evil of form-filling and return-making.

Cairncross, using the methods of Alice Walker, has suggested that the copy for F Henry V was based on Q1 and Q3 corrected by reference to a playhouse MS (unspecified) and eked out my MS sheets in places where the corrections or additions were extensive. The arguments are highly ingenious, but, I think, strained; inevitably they raise further difficulties.

With all good wishes

Yours sincerely,
J. H. Walter

Leddon Cottage, Welcombe, Bideford, Devon.—Praises Greg’s Shakespeare First Folio and refers to current bibliographical work on Shakespeare.

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Leddon Cottage, | Welcombe, | Bideford, | Devon.
16 May 1955

Dear Sir Walter,

The arrival of your book on Saturday was the greatest surprise and pleasure to me. It was very kind of you to remember me. I knew from Fredson Bowers that you had a book on the stocks, though I had not grasped that it was on so heroic a scale. I am greatly enjoying your balanced account of how matters stand.

As you say, the march of events is now beyond the ability of print to keep up with, but I judge that it will be a long time before anyone can give a coherent account of the printing of the Folio, as I don’t think the pattern is self-contained. Neither Schroeder’s conclusions nor Hinman’s forthcoming article (of which he sent me a copy) make sense in relation to compositors’ stints and the pattern must include, I think, some book or books being printed concurrently.

I hope all is well with you. We have had a gruelling winter as we were snow-bound or ice-bound for weeks, but at any rate no germs survive the rigours of this coast. We are looking forward very much to having Miss Willcock in Bude permanently after the summer, when she retires, and I hope she won’t be too much absorbed by her house and garden (especially the latter) to have no time for Shakespeare. I get on with my old spelling texts, but there seems no hurry called for until Hinman has finished his work.

It seems a pity in some ways that the project for a new facsimile was abandoned, but I suppose what is really wanted is a composite volume or volumes based on Hinman’s collation. But if the facsimile projected provided an incentive, this is to everyone’s good and I look forward to the companionship and help of your book in my own more trifling endeavours.

With my warmest congratulations,

Yours, most gratefully,
Alice Walker.

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Typed, except the signature and a comma.